Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
Harriet texts me.
Aiden texts Frank.
We hear the joint pings barely seconds apart as we lie there lost in one another’s faces, in a swathe of sunshine, our heads propped up by our arms. Frank’s cheeks are flushed from sleep and sex.
I read mine:
Meet you downstairs at 10 for breakfast? The five of us.
He reads his:
Hey dad. What you up to this morning? Gonna meet Harriet’s dad and hopefully her mum at 10 in your hotel restaurant. You in?
We say a joint, ‘Oh God.’
We convene on the patio because it’s finally warm enough to sit outside. Me. Frank. Rupert. Aiden and Harriet. I cannot look Frank in the eye. For the life of me, I just have to pretend that he’s not there.
‘So this is nice, then.’ Rupert spears a lemony potato. By his ebullient demeanour, anyone would think all was well in his world. ‘All of us together, like a family.’ And then he adds, ‘Plus Frank.’
Today Rupert is wearing the reverse of yesterday: a pale pink shirt and navy-blue trousers. And because he clearly didn’t want to risk winning any fashion award, he has knotted a navy-blue cashmere jumper over his shoulders. By contrast, Frank has on jeans and the same white T-shirt from last night that I peeled away from his body and slid over his head while I kissed an uncharted trail across his chest and down his stomach; an unending path to a destination that turned him to putty in my hands.
‘But speaking of Frank,’ Rupert continues. ‘When will you be heading home to America?’
Frank slowly drags a spoon around his Greek yogurt. ‘No plans, Rupe, but thanks for asking.’ After a beat he adds, ‘Might do some travelling.’ He licks the back of the spoon, and an incandescent blush blasts my face. ‘England’s a six-hour flight from here, huh?’ He finally meets my eyes, like he’s throwing out a challenge.
Rupert says, ‘Four, actually.’
‘Four actually.’ Frank’s eyes stay bolted to mine. ‘Hmm.’
He places the spoon down on his plate and I stare at that spoon for a very long time. Anything to avoid looking at him again.
Rupert starts waffling on about the Greek islands he’s been to, the ones he’d like to go to – and he’s even got a lot to say about those he couldn’t give a damn about. When there’s an uncomfortable lull in the conversation, Aiden stands, places his napkin on the table. ‘Well, I think I’m gonna walk off this breakfast.’ He pats his non-existent stomach. ‘You coming, Dad?’
Frank sits back in the seat, knots his fingers at his chest. ‘I’m good.’
Aiden hovers there. ‘Dad, I think you should come for a walk.’
Frank is studying me like he’s revisiting personal things he knows about me. I stare at his fingers, the white T-shirt that fits snuggly across his lean waist, remembering those solid shoulders against my hands, remembering a lot of things, and I discreetly blow air up to my own face. ‘I think you should go for a walk,’ I tell him.
‘Okay,’ he says, after a beat, with a solid message in his eyes. ‘Walk it is.’
Aiden drops a quick kiss on Harriet’s lips and tells her he’ll see her later. They seem cute with one another again. I watch as father and son saunter across the bright white patio towards the steps where Rupert nearly fell to his death. And then the three of us are left with our own company.
‘How was UCLA?’ Rupert says, cheerfully. As though Frank never came, and Frank never just went. As though Harriet just went to America, and came back from America, and nothing happened in between. As though I didn’t just tell him our marriage is over last night. He returns to spearing his potatoes.
Harriet says, ‘So fantastic that I’m going back just as soon as I’m fully better.’
Rupert looks from Harriet to me, his fork frozen in his hand.
I’m thinking, Please Harriet, let’s not do this here. My constitution almost can’t take it. Then Rupert says, ‘Aiden seems like a very fine young man.’
She goes to answer but takes an ungodly coughing fit instead. I have to dig in my bag for some extra tissues.
‘That is ghastly!’ Rupert nearly lifts from his chair. ‘Darling, we need to get you home so you can see a real doctor, not a Greek quack. That way you can be around people who love you and will take care of you.’
‘I was around people who love me and would take care of me,’ she says, when she can manage. ‘Mum and Aiden.’
‘That’s not fair,’ he pouts. ‘Very hurtful, actually.’
‘Because you never hurt people, do you, Dad?’
‘Are we really doing this again?’ he asks.
Harriet says, ‘Did you think we were just going to have a civilised conversation? Act like none of this happened?’
Rupert says, ‘I’m ever the optimist.’
‘Ceasefire, please!’ I rap my knife on the table.
Rupert says, ‘Hear, hear.’ Then he rolls his eyes in that slightly effeminate way he has of doing, that he might have learned from me. I can’t help but stare at the large chunk of potato that has missed his mouth and is languishing in the hammock of his jumper sleeve.
‘Are you guys getting back together?’ she asks.
Rupert quickly says, ‘Of course.’
At first I wonder if he’s just following the orders I gave him last night about us not discussing this with Harriet until we get home. But the way he bluntly meets my eye tells me something different.
‘You are?’ Harriet directs this to me.
‘We’re not,’ I say. ‘I didn’t want us to talk about it here, but as you have asked. You have a right to know.’
‘Okay this is seriously messed up.’ She looks askance at both of us. ‘How can one think you are, and the other think you’re not?’
Rupert says it’s a fascinating question but, unfortunately, he badly needs to pee. When he trots across the patio and disappears behind a door, Harriet says, ‘What’s going on with you and Frank? Are you sleeping with him?’
Another tidal wave of heat rushes over me again. ‘What? With Frank ? Good heavens, no!’
‘Oh my God, look at your face!’ She throws a finger at me. ‘You are sleeping with him.’ She screws up her face in distaste. ‘You’re having sex with Aiden’s dad? Ewwwww! That is so…’ She can’t even finish. She just settles for shaking her head. Then she croaks, ‘Is this why you’re not going back to Dad? Because you’re now with Frank? Or were you never going back to Dad? Is Frank just…’ She throws up her hands. I open my mouth to say something, but she cuts me off. ‘Is Frank just a sex thing, or are you in love with him?’
It’s as though the tables have turned again. I’m the shocking teenager, and she’s the disapproving parent. Rupert must do the fastest pee in the world because now he’s walking over to us, smiling like it’s a brand new day. ‘Shush!’ I say to Harriet. ‘Please. Not now.’
But before he’s even sat down, Harriet says, ‘I think you two need to get your acts together.’ She looks from me to her dad, then back to me again, staring hard at me like I’m a colossal disappointment to her. ‘Are you staying married, or are you getting divorced? You should listen to yourselves. I mean, seriously…’ She presses a hand to her ribcage, winces a bit. ‘You guys are making me ashamed to call you my parents. This is colossal crap.’ She stands, throws her napkin down on the table, and then she walks off coughing, and still clutching her side.
Rupert stares solidly into the tabletop. I think he’s going to say something profound, or even try to gaslight me again. But he finally looks up and says, ‘So Frank has facked off, and so has Aiden. Am I supposed to pick up the bill?’
‘You’re leaving?’ I stare, slightly mystified, at the half-full carry-on case on top of Frank’s unmade bed, the heap of shirts and the toiletry bag waiting to go in it. Our flight back to Athens isn’t for two more days.
‘Yeah.’ He sends the suitcase a look like it’s annoying him. ‘Thought I’d head back a day early. Got some things to do.’
I am not clear if he means he’s just getting off this island a day early, or if he’s actually heading back to America a day early. Either way, my soul seems to depart my body.
I can’t offer you a life to replace your current one. Can’t put myself in that position.
There’s not even the remotest chance I’d consider walking away from a marriage, straight into a relationship with someone else.
Of course. We had what I asked for. One glorious night. But now we’re the proverbial rock and a hard place; neither is going to change its position.
He gestures to the armchair. Not exactly an ebullient welcome but I go and sit. ‘How’s it going for you?’ he asks, glumly, tiredly.
I stare at the rumpled sheets, the wet towel tossed on it. ‘It’s gone better.’
‘You and your Greek vacations. Next time you need to pick a different destination.’
I want to snigger at this, but my heart is breaking in two. ‘You might have a point there,’ I say. ‘What about you, are you ever coming back to Santorini?’
He hisses. ‘Jesus. Never.’
Our gazes hang together. Finally, when the torture goes on too long, he says, ‘Look, whatever it is that’s been happening all this time…’
‘Was beautiful,’ I finish for him. I avert my gaze out of the window, to the water where I can see shadows of islands that might not even exist; they could just be some sort of illusion, like maybe all this has been. ‘I don’t regret it. Not one minute.’ When he doesn’t add anything – this thing he does, this infuriating habit of his – I say, ‘You could add something, you know. You don’t just have to blithely fuck off and leave me feeling so…’
‘What is there to say?’ He regards me rather mournfully. ‘People who tell you they don’t regret things the way you just said it, are usually putting it down to an episode of lapsed judgement.’ He cocks his head and looks at me quizzically.
And I don’t know if this is a test again, like playing dead in the water. Or if it’s his way of taking the easy road out. The one that bypasses all signs that point to commitment.
Then of course I know. I know that I will likely never know.
I look him in the eye and say it steadily, and clearly, ‘It may have started out as a lapsed judgement back in my apartment that day, but it will never, ever, be a regret.’